Editor's Note: Paul Nicklen, an internationally recognized photographer who specializes in documenting wildlife and change in the polar regions, will appear March 13 at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts as part of "Explorers & Adventurers: Pushing the Limits of Human Potential" presented by the Connecticut Forum (ctforum.org). He recently spoke about his work with Peter B. Pach, associate editor for Opinion, from his home in Canada. The following is edited excerpts from that conversation.

Pach: To capture photos, you spend hours under the Arctic water stalking leopard seals or other sea life. On other occasions you sat for hours on the ice to watch polar bears' mating rituals, all physically difficult and sometimes just plain risky. Is that adventure, derring-do or a calling?

Nicklen: I think when I was young, starting out in photography, I was like many wildlife photographers. I was out just shooting pretty pictures for the sake of making a living and getting published, you know that fuzzy feeling inside when you see your stuff published in a big magazine. And that very quickly went away. I just thought this ought to be more.

It became the calling of telling big important stories — when I can't feel my toes and things are burning and my hands are burning and my lips are frozen, and you're diving under the ice, or you're sitting outside.

I sat waiting for those mating polar bears for 26 hours without food, just sitting and waiting to get that one moment. It's not about, "Oh, I'm going to be famous when I get this picture." It's I'm going to connect people to this issue. I'm going to show them that the entire life cycle of polar bears revolves around ice. It doesn't happen on land. On land they shut down, they go into almost a state of walking hibernation. That's what pushes me to that extra level of pain threshold when I'm doing my work. It's just to come back with these stories.

Photographer/adventurer Paul Nicklen, who grew up on Baffin Island in far northern Canada, chronicles the changing conditions in the polar regions for National Geographic.

Pach: You grew up on Baffin Island in the Arctic immersed in a harsh environment populated by polar bears, narwhals and home to Inuits. You have found a way to stay immersed in that life even while documenting its changes. Are you among those exploring and having the last adventure in our polar regions before the ice and wildlife disappear?

Nicklen: It's gut-wrenching. I fell in love with the polar regions as a kid, saw polar bears as a kid and I saw a healthy icy environment as a kid ... through the eyes of the Inuits who are the true explorers. As I go back to those same friends, now 38 years later, you hear a much different story. We're actually doing a big National Geographic story this summer between Greenland and Baffin Island called "The Last Ice." It's going to be the last stronghold for multi-year ice in the Arctic in the next 20 to 30 years. We're just trying to protect that area before, you know ... once the ice is gone, it's gone. A consortium of scientists has a paper out coming out soon saying polar bears will likely be gone in the next 100 to 150 years. That's a blink, that's a flash.

Pach: Trained as a marine biologist, you became a photographer, an adventurer and finally an internationally known environmental advocate who photographs the complexity and beauty of nature while showing its fragility to those who see your work. Do you despair over modern civilization's distance from the natural world?

Nicklen: Yeah, that's what my job is, as we grew up in city centers and grew up with iPhones and iPads, and computers and we've become completely disconnected from that stuff. What I'm trying to do is reach people through Instagram, through the iPad, through National Geographic magazine, through Facebook, to use the power of visual storytelling to make that emotional connection to the environment, to the natural world. That's why my partner and I, Cristina Mittermeier, are launching an organization called Sea Legacy, to keep making that connection.

This summer, I was taking a donor to Sea Legacy up to Norway to witness some of the last ice. I took him to a place that's famous for ice and polar bears in the spring and summer. We found polar bears, young bears that had starved to death. Three-year-old bears, we're guessing. Part of me was just gut-wrenched sad but part of me was excited to be the photojournalist there to be able to document this and share it through the National Geographic Instagram site, to reach 12 million people with an image of the story that's close to my heart.

Pach: It's interesting you should say that as a journalist, we wrestle with this sometimes between advocacy and journalism, which is supposed to be disinterested. It's no secret, what you are trying to do.

Nicklen: Absolutely. I'd say 12, 15 years ago when I started with National Geographic, we walked that fine line of unbiased journalism and we presented both sides. That changed. It's actually more the editorial staff at Geographic, they've allowed me to do more of this advocacy type work and you know you still have to have credibility. You can't beat people over the head with it, you have to let them come to their own conclusions. I'm not out there in a tie-dyed T-shirt screaming save the whales, but I am using the power of photography to make that emotional connection. I have no guilt in doing so.

I felt it very ineffective as a biologist and, so now, I'm trying to bridge that gap between the important science discoveries and people by using the power of photography.

Pach: In covering the slaughter of the narwhal for its ivory tusk, you chose to advocate for the animal and expose the Inuit tradition of hunting them even though it meant criticizing people you grew up with. Was that a tough call?

Nicklen: It was the hardest thing I've every had to do in my life. These are my friends, these are my mentors, these are the people who taught me to survive in the Arctic. I went to my editor (at National Geographic) and said I'm really tortured over this. These are my friends. I don't want to do it. But, there's absolutely nobody else in the world who has access like me. You know, I'm witnessing things that nobody else will ever see. And then, finally, I was out there and the hunting was so gross one day. Guys were using high power rifles and they were blowing the heads off these young calves because they were in a bad mood and they were laughing as the whales were sinking out of sight. The population is definitely going down and it's all for ivory. My editor said you can do the story now or you can do it when they're all gone. It's fully up to you.

So, I went in there and I did it. That's when you know you're truly a journalist, when you're out there doing everything against what your heart's telling you to do. When you're miserable and you wake up crying and you can't eat and you're exhausted.

But nowhere did anybody represent the narwhal. On Baffin Island, they don't have to take any of the meat. They just take the skin and the tusk. So when you see 50 carcasses lying on the ice rotting — lying there — thousands of pounds of meat from each whale (they don't even feed it to their dog) and it's just for the ivory, you think, "just imagine if this was elephants. It would be global outcry." But it's out of sight, out of mind and that becomes my job as a journalist to report this when I've been given that access. It was a really awful experience for sure.